


Say Something

by Philosopher_King



Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe, Thor (Movies)
Genre: Brotherly Angst, Brotherly Love, Family Angst, Family Drama, Family Feels, Fix-It, Gen, Loki Has Issues, Odin's A+ Parenting
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-05-22
Updated: 2017-05-22
Packaged: 2018-11-03 14:16:01
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 2,133
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10968933
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Philosopher_King/pseuds/Philosopher_King
Summary: A series of "Thor" fix-it vignettes in which catastrophe is averted when, as suggested by the title, characters actually *talk* to each other for once.





	1. Value Me I

**Author's Note:**

> These all originated as fills for a drabble prompt meme where each prompt was of the form "X Me" (Amuse Me, Break Me, Call Me, Drink Me, etc.) and provided the basic plot of the drabble. Somehow I ended up writing _Thor_ fix-its for three of my prompts, so it seemed appropriate to put them all together. And maybe more will join them.

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Before his coronation, Thor tells Loki something about how he feels.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I already posted this one as Chapter 6 of "Tumblr Vignettes," and I didn't delete that chapter because I didn't want to lose the comments, but I also wanted to group it with the other _Thor_ fix-its. This was written for the following prompt: "Leave a 'Value Me' in my ask, and I’ll write a drabble about one character telling another how they feel about them."

“You are incapable of sincerity,” Thor gibed his brother, though his laugh was fond.

“Am I?” Loki said softly. His tone was light, but Thor could hear the hurt underneath it, and instantly regretted his ill-considered jest. Loki met his eyes, and for once they were open and earnest, innocent of mischief. “I’ve looked forward to this day as long as you have,” Loki murmured, so quietly that Thor had to strain to hear him, as if his honesty were the most intimate of secrets, one he could not bear for anyone else to overhear. “You’re my brother and my friend. Sometimes I’m envious”—his eyes flickered down with the admission, his teeth caught at his lip, but then he raised his gaze firmly to Thor’s again—“but never doubt that I love you.”

With a feeling like the ripple of electricity over his skin, or the sudden illumination of a storm-darkened landscape by the flash of lightning, it became clear to Thor that he was being presented with an opportunity that, if he did not seize it, might never come again.

He placed a firm hand where Loki’s neck met his shoulder and said, “I do not doubt it. I have never doubted it. And though I may not always show it—though I may seem to take your aid and loyalty for granted—never doubt how much I love and trust you. If I am not nervous—indeed, if I am not quaking-in-my-boots terrified—it is only because I know I will always have you at my side. Offering me your wise counsel, correcting me when I am foolish, supporting me when I am weary, doing with your mind and your magic the things that my arm and my will, however mighty, could never do. And of course,” he added with a grin, “your tricks will keep me on my toes should I grow complacent, and should my ego grow swollen, the blade of your tongue will lance it.”

Loki did not laugh. Instead, his eyes had gone wide and bright, pained and almost fearful.

“Thor, I—” He paused, uncertain. Thor could almost see in his eyes the battle within his mind: reasons, fears, hopes meeting and striking each other down faster than Thor could ever follow. And then he saw when the battle ended and determination firmed his mouth and glinted in his eyes. “Thor, I’ve done something terrible.”

 


	2. Value Me II

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In response to Thor's "apology" during his confrontation with the Destroyer, Loki tells him just what he has to be sorry for.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I got a second "Value Me" request, so I decided to write it as a companion piece to the first, but to have Loki express his feelings to Thor.

From his seat on the high throne of Hliðskjalf, Loki could see, as if through the eyes of a bird hovering just above the scene, Thor walking out alone to face the Destroyer. Still obeying Loki’s silent commands, the Destroyer approached him through the devastation of the deserted street. Then Thor began speaking—quietly, not a speech for the friends who lingered anxiously at some distance, but for Loki alone, as if they stood face to face.

“Brother, whatever I have done to wrong you, whatever I have done to lead you to do this, I am truly sorry. But these people are innocent. Taking their lives will gain you nothing. So take mine, and end this.”

Loki’s jaw was clenched so hard that his teeth hurt. _“Whatever I have done”?_ He inhaled sharply through his nostrils, and as if in answer, the Destroyer opened its mask and heated from inside, preparing to breathe its fire. But at Loki’s wordless command, the Destroyer shuttered and cooled, and Loki projected just his voice beside Thor’s ear, as if he stood at his shoulder. “Liar,” he hissed.

“What?” Thor asked stupidly, like a dog being scolded for some offense it does not understand.

“Liar,” Loki said again, louder, more vicious. “How can you be ‘truly sorry’ if you do not even know what you have done?”

“Then tell me, so that I may give you the apology you need,” Thor begged.

“Oh, gladly,” Loki bit out. “All our lives, you have taken my love, my help, my _worship_ even, as if they were no more than your due. And what have you given me in return? You claim all the glory and adulation for victories that belonged to both of us; you demean the very gifts with which I aid you— _‘Some do battle, others just do tricks’_ —and invite even the lowest servants to join you in your mockery. But it is _‘my place,’_ isn’t it, to hover silently at your elbow, always ready to serve; to sacrifice any pride and ambition of my own to your greater glory; to _thank_ you for the kicks you throw in my direction, because at least they mean that you have noticed me. And I am sick of it, Thor; it sticks in my throat and chokes me. I know now that I was not born to be your faithful hunting dog. No—I am a direwolf; and however docile the pup may seem, a wild creature will not be forever kept as a pet. Beware its fangs! For they will teach you to regret each careless kick.”

Thor was standing in dumbfounded silence, his mouth hanging foolishly open, a look of pain and horror on his face. His friends were murmuring their confusion, wondering why he had been standing there for so long, doing and saying nothing. Was he hurt? In shock? Under some kind of spell? In a sense, Loki mused, he was all three. The only wound he had taken, the only spell that transfixed him, was that of truth; but as Loki knew all too well, there was no wound more grievous, no curse more powerful.

“Oh, Loki, my brother, my little brother,” Thor began; his voice broke on the last word, and the tears that brimmed in his eyes spilled over to trace lines in the dust on his face.

“I’m not your brother. I never was,” Loki spat, but the violence of his declaration was marred by the tremor in his own voice, as the sight of Thor’s weeping called forth the tears he did not even know he had been fighting to hold back.

“You are _always_ my brother, always, always. Yes, you are a direwolf, you are a dragon, _and_ you are my brother, and I am sorry. I am so very, very sorry.”

Thor held out his hand, his palm slightly curved as if to cup an invisible face from which Loki’s voice proceeded, and then his fingers curled as if wishing to grip the nape of his neck in his customary gesture of comfort and affection. He grasped at empty air, until with a rush of wind and a darkening of the clear desert sky, a familiar shape approached from above, and Mjölnir’s leather-wrapped handle flew to meet his outstretched palm.

For a moment Thor stared blankly, unbelievingly, at the hammer in his hand. Then he called, “Heimdall! Take me home. My brother needs me.”

There was no answer. Of course there was no answer. “Heimdall!” Thor called again, anxious and impatient.

Now Loki was the one frozen in shock and indecision. Could he trust this? Was it not too little and too late? What of his plan to prove his greater worth to their father? Why did it now feel so petty, so hollow? Was there any way to undo what he had already done, or had he gone too far to turn around?

Thor, somehow, had not gone too far—or so Mjölnir had judged. He had reached out for Loki, and Mjölnir had come back to him. Did that mean that Loki, too, had some worth yet?

Something in Loki had decided before his paralyzed mind could intervene. He was already rushing toward the stables as he sent a last projected message to Thor: “Wait for me. I’ll bring you home.”

 


	3. Get Me

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> When Loki is hanging from the edge of the Bifrost, Odin cannot manage to say the right thing to him, so Thor does.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> "Leave a 'Get Me' in my ask, and I will write a drabble about one character saving another." And so I did.

With a last mighty hammer-blow the bridge shattered in an explosion of ice-like shards and white-hot light, an eerie wail reverberating over the water, just as Loki threw himself at Thor with Gungnir poised to strike. The force of the explosion flung them both over the edge of the splintered bridge—whose collapse had, mercifully, broken its destructive hold on Jötunheim.

For a moment there was no up or down, just a sickening rush, the waves of blinding light, the roar of water and the shriek of the Bifröst’s death. But when the cloud of light began to disperse and Thor could see both the crumbling golden dome of the observatory and Loki—his cloak whipping wildly around him, Gungnir still in his hand, screaming with what was as likely to be rage as fear—Thor knew that Loki was below him, and that he had to catch hold of the spear if he was to have any chance of saving his brother. Casting up a prayer to the Norns or whatever higher gods might be above them, Thor stretched out his hand—and wondrously, miraculously, it closed around Gungnir’s haft, just as he felt an iron grip close around his own foot. Thor did not know who had saved them, but he blessed the owner of that hand along with the goddesses of fate.

Groaning with the effort of holding up his brother’s weight, stretched out as he was and poised to fall, Thor looked into Loki’s anguished face, trying to catch his eye and urge him wordlessly to hold on, just hold on. But Loki was looking past him at whoever was above them, his eyes hopeful and pleading and terrified.

“I could have done, it Father,” Loki cried, his voice raw and ragged, answering Thor’s question as to the identity of their rescuer. “I could have done it! For you! For all of us.” His voice faded as he spoke the last words, but he ventured a small, sad, desperate smile. Before, up on the bridge, Thor had felt like he was fighting a stranger wearing his brother’s face; but now all at once he could see the boy he had grown up with, the little brother who had followed him everywhere, wanting to do everything he did, and oh Verðandi he looked so _young._

Thor could not see his father’s face, so it came as a shock to him when all he said was a quiet, disappointed “No, Loki.”

Loki’s face _emptied—_ that was the only way Thor knew to describe it. His tiny smile faded, his knitted brow smoothed, and all the hope and terror drained from his eyes, along with all the light.

Horror and panic surged from Thor’s stomach into his throat. What in Hel was Odin _thinking_? Could he not see that his child was in crisis, in agony, on the edge of falling—in mind and spirit as well as body?

It took all the effort his exhausted body could muster, but Thor knew he had to speak. “You never had to prove anything, Loki—certainly not by killing; I have learned that much now. You were always a worthy son, a worthy brother.”

Loki turned his eyes to Thor’s, and they were still hollow. He did not care what Thor had to say; Odin’s words were the only ones that mattered. His grip on the spear loosened slightly and began to slide downward. _No, no, no!_ Thor’s mind screamed, along with his heart.

But mercifully, Odin understood the message to him implicit in his words to Loki. “That was never what I wanted from you, Loki. I meant what I said to you: you are my son, and a son of Asgard, regardless of where you were born; I have never doubted that. I have done you a great wrong; I never understood until now how great. Come home, and I will try my utmost to make it right.”

The tiniest flicker of light rekindled in Loki’s eyes, gleaming along with the tears that started; his slack mouth tightened in concert with his white-knuckled grip on Gungnir’s haft. Thor let out a sob of relief.

“Hold on, both of you,” Odin ordered from above them, and began to tug mightily on Thor’s foot. His shin scraped painfully over the splintered edge of the bridge, and a shard tore through his trousers to gash into his knee, but he hardly felt it; all his attention was fixed on Loki. He did not take his eyes from his brother’s face until he had pulled him onto the bridge, never letting go of Gungnir until their hands met on the haft and Thor used his other hand to grasp Loki’s wrist and help him clamber up. Then he dropped the spear and pulled Loki into a fierce embrace. They were both still trembling with exertion, terror, and too many other emotions to name. Thor pulled his brother in tighter.

“You’re safe,” he whispered shakily, to reassure himself as much as Loki. “I’ve got you.”

 


End file.
